In occupied western Europe in 1940–41, the Nazis encountered many active or potential collaborators. The leaders of Vichy France were eager to pursue a partnership with the Reich, which could have gained the support of many people in France, and conceivably led to French belligerence against Britain. But Hitler’s economic exploitation of Pétain’s nation, notably by imposing an artificially high exchange rate for the mark against the franc, progressively alienated the French, even before the 1943 introduction of forced labour in Germany, the detested Service de Travail Obligatoire.
